Metatietojaan

Metatietojaan is a Finnish linguistic form that expresses possession of metadata by a third-person possessor. It translates roughly to "their metadata" or "his/her metadata," depending on context.

The word stems from metatieto, meaning metadata. In Finnish, metadata is pluralized in the partitive form metatietoja, which is then combined with a possessive suffix to indicate ownership. The resulting form metatietojaan signals that the metadata belongs to a third person or entity referenced in the sentence.

In usage, metatietojaan commonly appears in discussions about data management, privacy, and information governance. It is typical in statements about what metadata a person or organization maintains, controls, or has accessed. For example, a sentence might read: Käyttäjä on päivittänyt metatietojaan, meaning “The user has updated their metadata.”

Grammatically, metatietojaan illustrates how Finnish forms encode possession on top of case endings. The base metatietoja is the partitive plural of metatieto, and the possessive suffix attaches to that form to indicate the possessor. The exact suffix adapts to Finnish phonology and pronoun reference.

See also: metatieto, metadata, Finnish grammar, possessive suffixes, partitive case.